week 12: 18th -24th of April

Monday we continued with drawing hands.  We pushed our understanding of the hands a bit further by having our live model hold a bowl to see how the hands react when holding an object.  The hands do tense up a bit from the weight of holding the bowl as well as the pads of the fingers.  With experience from drawing hands from last week it was easier to get the proportions correct.  I also have learned that you really have to be aware of where the thumb starts so that it ends up looking like a thumb instead of starting at the top of the hand, making it look like another finger.  One thing that I found helpful was when Amy instructed us to first lightly draw in the bowl and then place the hands around the bowl.  By drawing in the bowl it helped me to understand how the hand actually interacts with an object.  I also think that I have improved on drawing hands by illustrating several different plains on the hand in order to make the drawing three-dimensional.  When I established the plains, I took into account the light source and added in shadows on the hand.  I feel as though my hand drawing was pretty successful however, I wish I would have pushed myself more in order to complete both of the hands within our time limit in order to really show how the hands react from holding an object.  On Wednesday we instantly started on drawing the skull from a skeleton and skipped our usual introduction of the anatomy that we learn for the week.  It was a nice change to start drawing without being instructed how to do so.  I feel that it really forces you to thoroughly look at all of the elements of the skull instead of trying to focus on finding the landmarks of the skull.  I found drawing the skull very interesting because of how often you see skulls depicted in designs and how much they can vary from different artists.  I am really looking forward to learning more about the characteristics of the skull in order to correctly depict it.      

week 11:

week 11: 11th-17th of April

I really liked this week of life drawing!  Monday we started out concentrating on drawing the arm muscles like in the previous week of class.  It was nice working with material that we were already familiar with to ease into the week.  On Wednesday we moved on to a new part of the body and were instructed on how to draw hands from the board.  More than I imagined you basically take the same approach to drawing a hand as you do a foot, which we learned earlier in the semester.  I really liked drawing the feet so drawing the hands was not too much of a problem for me.  The only real significant difference is that the hand’s thumb starts on the side while the fingers come out of the top of the hand.  Like the foot the hand is also really easy to make 3-D.  If you have a good light source you really get a good sense of where the plains are.  One thing that I have never really thought of before is how the first knuckle is rounded while the next two joints are square.  I learned a lot from having to draw both a human hand and the skeleton hand, although I wish I had drawn the skeleton hand fist so I could emphasize the bone structure in the human hand.  Overall the hand has a lot of irregular bones that I would have never really noticed had I not drawn from the skeleton because from a live model most of the irregular forms are hidden with muscle and skin.  To my surprise the muscles on my manikin are look correctly proportioned!  I still have a few to add on, but it was definitely a relief when Amy only had a problem with the way one of the muscle’s tendons connected to the thumb.  The forearm was similar to the upper leg when considering the many muscles that belong there and the way they are pushed together and connect to some of the same locations.  I am really glad that I took off excess clay from the muscles of the forearm because with all of the muscles there I would have made the arm look pretty bulky!

week 10: 4th-10th of Apri

What I struggled with mostly this week was drawing the entire body in thirty seconds.  I have always had trouble with completing the whole figure within the time frame, but as we add learn more about the body its harder to add in certain muscles and bones.  Even though the thirty-second gesture drawings don’t have to be very detailed I have trouble drawing simplified lines.  Instead of using cross contour for the legs, which is one single line for each leg, I find myself trying to complete the whole leg.  I know that this is one of the reasons why the time limit is such a struggle for me.  I think I just need to get into the habit of doing gesture drawings by using minimal lines instead of thinking too much about the body and the other bones and muscles I want to add in.  I also should start with adding the egg and then the pelvis directly after.  The egg, which includes the ribs, usually has a distinct relationship with the pelvis and both can move in so many ways.  I have trouble with capturing those angles accurately enough to be able to add in more like the arms, legs, and some other bone and muscle landmarks.  One thing I’m glad we were told is how to draw parts of the body form using mainly our shoulders to draw in big sweeping motions creating a drawing that looks more energetic.  I’m also glad we were told to draw what is closest to you darker so that there is a sense of depth.  This is something that may seem obvious but its easy to forget when your focusing on body forms.  In one of my long drawings this week I was really able to practice on foreshadowing.  I think that drawing turned out pretty good, but I wish I would of had a little more time so I could really focus on certain muscles and prominent bones to add detail.  I’m sure we will be doing more long poses next week, so I can practice up!

week 9: Arm Anatomy

week 9: 28th-3rd of April

I found this week especially helpful.  I was able to complete my muscle assignment that we had last week the weekend before Monday so I got to use our class period just to draw.  Because everyone was allowed to do his or her own thing Monday, clay or drawing, there was absolutely no pressure to do well on our drawings, which seemed to help.  I’m not saying that I feel overly pressured when we do life drawings as a class, but simply that Monday was a low-key day for all of us.  I think I was able to work out the majority of the problems that I was having trouble with last week being the back muscles.  For the most part, I can depict where the back muscles start, but it is hard for me to draw in the hidden parts of the muscle.  I was able to get some pointers form Amy during Monday’s class which really helped, but I’m not sure if I would be able to do draw them in by myself without looking at the skeleton and manikins.  Wednesday I we learned about how to draw the upper arm, which included the biceps and triceps ect.  Overall these muscles seemed easy to pick out and were also easy to draw with soft curves.  I feel that after completing the upper arm muscle assignment this weekend on my manikin I have a better understanding of the muscles.  However, the ventral side of my manikin shows a little too much negative space from my muscles.  There are gaps between the muscles and they don’t hug each other like the leg muscles do.  My guess is that I made them wrong!  I am hoping that I just need to squish them together, but I think the problem might be bigger than that.  Even if I would squish them together they still wouldn’t look quite like the muscle diagrams I found on Google images meaning my proportions are likely to be off as well as how they wrap around the bone and attach.